The Autobiography of Karl von Dittersdorf. Translated by A. D.
Coleridge. (R. Bentley and Son.)—Karl Dittersdorf—he won his nobility by the exercise of his musical genius—was born at Dresden in 1739, and died late in the century (the exact date is not given). For the greater part of his life he was in the service of the Prince-Bishop of Breslau. On this potentate's death he was pensioned with 500 flarins (out of which he had to pay a
war-tax" of 60, equivalent to an Income-tax of 28. 8d. in the pound). The story of his life is a very curious one, not so much in itself, as in the strange picture which it gives of life in the small German Courts of the day. Facile princeps among these oddities is the musician's Episcopal patron. A more grotesque Bishop never was ; yet he was a man of many good qualities. Only the absolute frivolity of the world in which he lived was too much for him. It is the picture of this world, drawn with abso- lute fidelity by one who had no thought of pointing a moral, that makes the book interesting.
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